


andromedae

by twilightscribe



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alien Character(s), Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Dream Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Porn With Plot, Romance, Romantic Soulmates, Smut, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 10:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16491119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightscribe/pseuds/twilightscribe
Summary: In the aftermath of the explosion, Venom and Eddie reunite and the nature of their relationship begins to shift and change, becoming something...more. And, as it turns out, the Life Foundation and Riot were only the beginning.





	andromedae

He washes up on the shore. Alone.

 

 

 

Eddie’s first conscious thought after the explosion and landing in the water is a simple one.

_Ow_.

Even with his eyes closed, there’s bright light filtering through his eyelids. And it _hurts_.

Strangely, he can’t feel anything else. There’s a strange feeling of disconnectedness from his body; sort of like he’s there but _not_ there. Honestly, it feels rather like he’s floating – if it weren’t for the daggers of light stabbing into his head.

The numbness doesn’t go away.

There’s cotton in his mouth. A beeping noise in his ears. Yet his head feels strangely empty. The silence feels oppressive. The only thoughts in his head are his own.

He hears no reassuring voice.

Unconsciousness claims him again.

 

 

 

Waking up again happens in stages.

The smell hits him first. That too sweet, sterile scent that Eddie recognizes as being unique to hospitals. Or morgues. Even after all of his years of investigative journalism, he never could separate the two.

Eddie kind of doubts that he’s in the morgue. Mostly because being dead shouldn’t be this uncomfortable.

He twitches his fingers. Weight on his index. The beeping in his ears picks up speed, echoing around and around in his head. He tries to swallow, but gags. There’s something in his throat.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to open his eyes. Takes even longer for them to come into focus. The light hurts, burns, and feels like pins stabbing into his skull, and he blinks. Slowly, the room begins to stop resembling a bunch of fuzzy whiteness and something more cohesive, something that he can recognize.

Considering how much time he’s spent in the last few days in hospitals and labs, it shouldn’t confuse him so much when he wakes up in the former.

_“You’re dying, Eddie_.”

Eddie blinks slowly.

_I’m dying. **We won’t let you.**_

It takes the space of seventy-nine beeps for Eddie’s brain to connect the dots, to remember what happened on his last hospital visit. The beeping spikes, coming too fast, and Eddie squeezes his eyes closed, trying to block out the thought.

_Don’t let me die_.

There’s the sound of hurried footsteps, the frantic clicking of shoes against linoleum. He can hear voices, someone says his name but it sounds _wrong_. He tries to scream but something is lodged in his throat. His vision has gone sharply out of focus, turning to a blur once more.

His name echoes in his ears. _Eddie, Eddie, Eddie_.

_No! No wrong!_

There’s a prick in his arm. He tries to howl. _It hurts_. Darkness at the edge of his vision and he turns towards it, tries to reach towards it because _familiar darkness wrapping around him warmth safety protection_.

**Mine.**

 

 

 

He wakes up feeling stiff. Every limb feels sore and when he twitches, his wrists twinge.

Eddie blinks his eyes open.

He’s still in the hospital.

He’s still alone.

He sinks back into the hospital bed, feeling strangely empty. Heat pricks at the corners of his eyes.

It takes time before he realizes it.

He’s mourning Venom.

 

 

 

He was sedated for four days, restrained for five. The breathing tubes are removed on the fifth.

Everyone wants to talk to him. The cops, doctors, lawyers, reporters. Everyone wants to know what happened.

Dan stops by. He’s not dying. Not anymore.

“Your organs are still in rough shape,” Dan tells him. “We aren’t sure if they’ll recover; you might need a transplant in the future if they don’t.”

Eddie nods and says nothing. He hasn’t said a word since he woke up.

“Whatever happened,” Dan says, before he leaves. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

_You die. I die._

It was a lie.

_Did you ever really need me?_

 

 

 

The doctors want him to talk to a therapist. Eddie doesn’t say anything, but he knows that they think it’s trauma; that he saw something, experienced something. That Venom _did_ something to him to change him that needs fixing.

They’re not wrong. Venom _did_ change him.

But what no one understands but him is that there _is_ no fixing him. Not when what’s been lost is something that can never be replaced. It’s irrevocable, the hole that Venom has left in him; his absence is acute and painful. The wound will be slow to heal, if it ever does.

Somehow, Eddie thinks he won’t recover.

Falling hard and fast has always been his problem. How many days was it? Two? Three? Probably set a new record there. His mother would laugh at him – if it wasn’t for the whole alien parasite-thing with Venom. But all Eddie can feel is the gaping emptiness that has opened up inside him; the place that Venom had filled.

_**“You are mine.”** _

Eddie closes his eyes, lays back against the crunchy pillow and says quietly to himself, “Always gonna be yours.”

 

 

 

Ten days later and the doctors are looking at letting him go home.

Eddie’s looking forward to it. Or as much as he can. He just wants to leave.

He’s pretty sure that he’s had more blood drawn and tests done than any other human in the course of history. All while he was unconscious, of course, because all the tests that they’ve asked him to do when he’s awake he’s turned down. He rejected the MRI that one doctor wanted to run. He can still hear the echoing of Venom’s screams in his head.

Anne’s been by. Actually, she’s been around quite a lot. Half of the forms that get shoved in his face, she confiscates from him and hands back to the doctors with a sharply worded legal threat. To more than one nosy reporter, she says, “Mister Brock is not taking any visitors.”

She doesn’t ask about Venom. She says nothing about what happened.

Eddie’s grateful.

 

 

 

Day twelve in the hospital begins the same way that all of the others have begun.

Eddie wakes to cold, bright white light. With an absence in his head that nothing can fill. His thoughts echo round and round, with no one to answer them. He misses the hum under his skin, the feeling of something _alive_ pulsing through his veins.

Most of all, though, he hates the loneliness.

Six months of being alone. Six months of rejection after rejection. Six months of watching everyone and everything move on without him. A handful of blissful days, the thought that _I will never be alone again_ echoing in his head.

That’s gone now. Once more, he’s alone.

He watches the drip-drip of his IV. Absently picks at the green jell-0 on the tray in front of him. His stomach rumbles. He’s hungry, he knows, but he has no appetite. A part of him wonders what it would be like to just… waste away. But the rational part of him knows that isn’t going to happen; the doctors won’t let it.

Venom wouldn’t like it if he starved.

He turns his attention back to the food. It looks just as bland and unappetizing as it always has. Eddie wonders if he can bribe someone to bring him something that’ll _actually_ tempt him.

The doorknob rattles and Eddie glances up, then back down. A nurse shuffles in. Nothing new there. He thinks that he might have been put on suicide watch or something, because they come and go like clockwork.

But she doesn’t approach.

Eddie looks up.

She looks unsteady on her feet. A point made more obvious when she awkwardly lurches towards the bed.

Normally, Eddie thinks that he should feel alarmed. But he just watches, wondering whether or not he should press the call button and summon another nurse.

She stumbles, grabs the handrail at the side of his bed, looks up at him, and says a single word.

“ **Eddie**.”

All the breath freezes in his lungs. His heart thuds loudly in his ears. Words stick in his throat. He hadn’t thought–

He stretches his hand out, touches the nurse’s face and it’s like the kiss in the woods. Her face turns into the touch, blackness welling out of every pore and orifice and it _should_ horrify him – it’s like every horror movie cliché come to life – but all Eddie feels is _joy_ even as those tendrils and strings of blackness cover his hand and sink into the flesh.

It’s like a rush, like the hit of the best drug. Like coming home and getting lucky all at once.

Venom slides up his arm, along his chest, touch light and barely there and Eddie _knows_ that’s not necessary but it _is_ and Venom is doing this _for him_. He needs the reassurance, craves it, and it’s only as Venom sinks back beneath his flesh, hums in his veins, does he breathe once more.

The last few tendrils sink into his hand. The nurse falls away, hits the floor with a muffled thud.

Eddie presses a hand over his chest, can hear the steady beep of the monitor and the hum in his veins and that gaping hole within him is slowly filled as Venom slides back into place.

_Mine_.

**Yours.**

 

 

 

Venom is quiet when they’re discharged from the hospital. Quiet the entire taxi ride to the hotel and trip up the elevator. Each brush against Eddie is weak, soft, and his voice – when Eddie thinks about it – was quiet. It didn’t boom through his system, send shivers down his spine, and set something alight within him he never had thought he could feel again.

There’s soft reassurance brushing against his awareness.

**Weak.**

The hotel’s nice, swanky almost, and Eddie briefly wonders who, exactly, is footing the bill for this, but decides it doesn’t matter. He’ll think about it later, when he’s not just been released from the hospital and Venom’s not feeling like he may vanish at any moment.

**Won’t vanish.**

Eddie laughs, the first sound that he’s made in days, and says, “Sounds good.”

Venom stirs, curls around him and it would have been strange, before, to feel something shifting protectively around his organs.

**You missed us. Missed me.**

“Picked up on that, huh?”

Venom chuckles, sounds a little more like himself, **You’re not very quiet. Could hear you, _feel_ you.**

“Huh?”

There’s a thoughtful little hum, a rumble deep in his head. It takes Venom so long to answer that Eddie thinks he’s being ignored.

**There was us. Alone. Floating. Couldn’t feel you. Then… I could _feel_ you and you were moving away. Followed. Found you.**

With the confession, there are flickers. The loneliness, the fear, the pain. It’s very fleeting, but he gets the impression of different hosts, of flickers of memories, emotions – eyes that aren’t his and _wrong wrong wrong_. Nothing felt _right_.

**None of them were you, Eddie.**

It sends warmth cascading through him, shatters those doubts and makes him feel… _important_. He matters. This wasn’t just a fluke; it’s not about survival. He _means_ something.

Eddie flops down onto the bed, can feel Venom shifting inside of his head. And he should feel violated at the lack of privacy, knows that Venom is flitting through his memories – trying to piece together what he’s missed – and Eddie doesn’t care. He closes his eyes, feels warm and safe for the first time in over a week, and lets himself drift.

**You missed us.**

“Mom always warned me that I fall hard and fast.”

He can hear the cock of a head. The bleed-through of confusion.

**You thought of us as a parasite. Called us one.**

It strikes him, then, that Venom doesn’t always have context.

“Saved my life, though. You didn’t have to. And you _like_ me.”

Venom pauses. **Yes. You are why we changed. Why we fought, why we sacrificed.**

“I’m pretty fucked up,” Eddie admits softly. “Betrayed the trust of the one person in the world I loved cause all I saw was a story. Took an alien and nearly dying to admit any of that was wrong – that I was at fault. I was pretty content in blaming everyone else for my problems.”

**You could get her back. She still cares.**

“No,” Eddie says slowly, smiling. “We’re good.”

 

 

 

The room’s being paid for by the Life Foundation. Apparently, they’re hoping that he won’t sue. He still might. There’s already a mountain of unlawful death lawsuits mounting against them – Skirth’s family being chief among them – and it looks like they’re trying to beat the punch of another one.

Eddie’s really glad for those few days, that he doesn’t have his phone. He’s pretty sure that, at the moment, it’s either dead or blowing up in his former boss’ office. Frankly, he doesn’t really care; just glad that someone else is dealing with the problem and not him. He’s got enough to deal with as it is.

Like convincing his alien paramour not to eat the hotel’s staff.

“Look, we can find you someone to eat _later_ but eating the people who bring room service and clean the room is not allowed. They’re just trying to make a living.”

**You call us that. Why?**

Oh, he’s been caught now. They haven’t had this conversation yet. Eddie’s been skirting the subject. And he knows that he’s been acting like a schoolgirl with a crush: dropping hints and hoping that Venom will pick up on them so he doesn’t have to come out and say it outright. Feelings are hard and Eddie’s bad at them.

“Well, I…” Eddie clears his throat and looks down at his sock-clad feet. “Shit.”

**You are embarrassed.**

“I don’t do feelings good. Talking about them, I mean.” He’s back to dancing around the issue again, hoping that Venom picks up on his thoughts so he doesn’t have to have this conversation. Even though it’s long overdue.

**We cannot read your mind, Eddie. Not when your thoughts move so fast.**

He swallows, “You really wanna make me say it, huh?”

**You acknowledged it when you thought us dead. What makes now so different?**

“You’re here,” Eddie replies softly. “Guess it’s easier to acknowledge something when you think it’s gone than when you’re confronted with it. I’ve always been an idiot about recognizing when I’ve got something that matters.”

**We matter.**

“Yeah,” Eddie chuckles. “Yeah, you do.”

**You care. About us.**

He lets his eyes close, “Fuck. Yeah. Yeah, I do. A lot.”

**You consider us partners. Not only in the physical sense, but the romantic as well?**

“That weird you out? It’s alright, you know. I don’t really expect you to reciprocate.”

Venom hums thoughtfully.

**We would not have returned to you unless we did.**

Really, though, Eddie should have known better. Venom’s an alien. They gotta have a weird idea of romance, right?

**To bond with one’s host the way we have is… unusual. It is why the others did not survive; why their hosts died. And them as well.**

Venom’s unusually talkative. Eddie relaxes into the bed, letting Venom’s voice wash over and through him. He missed it; the sounds and feeling of not being alone in his head.

“You mean it’s typical for your kind to, what? Kill their host?”

**Yes. Compatibility is important, a factor. Finding a compatible host can be difficult, but not impossible. But one must feel a connection, else the host is little more than flesh to be worn and disposed.**

His eyes fly open, “You didn’t–”

**Our hosts since you have survived. You changed us, gave us stability where we had none; a home for which we were lacking. Insight which we needed. Our hosts before were… wrong – incompatible. We may try, but they will never be right. Will never survive.**

“Huh.”

**You are curious. We are unique. And also why we are considered a ‘loser’. Hosts are to be used and discarded – devoured from the inside and then shed for a new one. This is how Riot survived, how the others would have – that is what we stopped.**

“We stopped the extinction of humankind. Wow. We’re big heroes, aren’t we?”

**You are the hero, Eddie. You showed us the way.**

His skin warms, tingles, and he can’t help but feel… proud. The only person who’d considered him to be so special had been his mom. And isn’t that kind of sad?

**You will always be special to us.**

“Thanks.”

**You are welcome.** Venom pauses, then continues, **You worry that we do not feel the same. You are wrong.**

“I am?”

**The human language is strange. Full of concepts we do not completely understand.** Venom pauses again, then continues, slower and sounding almost… nervous. **When we connected to Anne, we learned of ‘soulmates’. And she thought that you were hers, for a time. Humans are strange, but the concept rings true.**

He shoots upright, head spinning and mouth dry, “Wait, what–”

**‘Soulmate’ is adequate. ‘Love’ less so. Our kind do not ‘love’ as yours do – freely and easily. We do feel – deeply. But it is rare for us to find one – most believe impossible. To join with another so intimately and deeply. It is dangerous and frowned upon. You die, we die.**

It feels a little bit like his brain is melting. His heart has leapt up into his throat and begun hammering against his Adam’s apple. Though distant, Eddie can hear his breath and it sounds high, like a whistle, in his throat.

The feeling of Venom surging forth is comforting. His breathing slows, his heart rate begins to resume something more normal.

**This frightens you.**

His head’s still spinning, made worse when he shakes it, all of these thoughts scattered around and a torpedo of doubt being revived and then sunk. He takes a deep breath, “You… you and me… soulmates?”

**It is the closest concept to how we feel in human understanding we could find. No one else will match us as well as you. No one else will understand. You changed us, Eddie. We will have no one else.**

He swallows, hard. His thoughts are still racing, because this is _insane_ and probably the weirdest shit that’s happened to him – and that’s saying a lot, considering what he’s been through in the past two weeks.

But… from the moment that Venom had ripped himself from him, Eddie had felt lost, adrift, as though all meaning and colour had been ripped from his world. Maybe that was melodramatic, but Eddie doesn’t really care; it was the truth.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Eddie admits slowly. “But I… you know… I kinda expected it.”

**We changed you.**

“Kinda hard not to be. You know me better than anyone else – inside and out.”

Venom chuckles. It sends shivers down Eddie’s spine. He leans back on the bed, pillowing his head in his hands.

“Till death do us part, then?”

**Till death do us part.**

 

 

 

Venom does not understand humans sometimes. But Venom considers himself to be a quick study.

TV is useful. Eddie watches a _lot_ of TV. Venom finds it strange, but also to be useful research. He takes notes – mental ones, at least – and tries to figure out human relationships. They are very complicated, Venom finds, if the ones on TV are to be believed.

Beyond that, however, Venom notices a pattern.

_Marriage_ is important to humans. He had known that, being joined to Eddie and then, briefly, to Anne. That had been their plan – to tie themselves in ‘holy matrimony’, as the humans put it. It’s unimportant to Venom, for his joining with Eddie is more intimate than any union mere humans could achieve.

But Venom, though, knows that humans have needs – not only for survival. They are fragile, soft creatures, to whom physical contact is immensely important.

He had kissed Eddie in the woods. Anne had given him the idea. He had seen that in their memories, felt what Anne had felt, and wanted that for himself. He is a dark, possessive creature – like all of his kind, really – and the thought of another taking what is his, _touching_ Eddie, causes jealousy to spike deep and violently inside of him.

Venom _does_ try to keep that from Eddie. There is part of him which worries that Eddie does not fully understand what it means to be joined – to be _theirs_. And that part fears losing what they have once again – the pain of being separated, not only just the _act_ of it, but the feeling as well, had been nearly fatal. It hurt more than the fire, than the screaming sound of the MRI, than the explosion.

But then Eddie shifts in his sleep, his mind sleepy and content. There’s a mental nudge, soft and gentle and unconscious, and Venom recognizes it for what it is. He responds instinctively, curling around Eddie and sheltering him, pulling him close until he cannot tell where he ends and Eddie begins.

He understands, though, that humans have needs. Emotional and mental, but also physical. He can keep Eddie alive, healthy – mentally and physically – but he worries about the _other_ needs.

When Eddie sleeps, Venom flips through what he has learned since coming to Earth. He does not like to think of the lab, of the tests and containment and the strain of having to change hosts so frequently – it had taken time to understand how soft and fragile humans were; how easily they could die.

Flicking through the memories of his hosts, Venom touches upon that of one of the men he had taken to reach the hospital. The memories are slightly dimmed – they had been hidden behind a wall of shame and denial, but they had been there. He nudges them, gets them to unfold and begins to learn.

Eddie needs physical contact. Eddie is a healthy human male, bonded to a terribly jealous and possessive alien. Venom hums thoughtfully. Their intimacy, at present, goes beyond the physical to something any human beyond Eddie would never understand or comprehend. But it also lacks what humans need.

Humans reproduce sexually. Venom knew this from the first host he had taken. But they also enjoy the intimacy of the act – it isn’t all about reproduction. Eddie enjoys it; Eddie enjoys it quite a bit, Anne had confirmed that.

There is also, Venom knows, a difference between sexual and romantic attraction. Eddie may be _romantically_ attracted to him – and his own gender – but that does not, necessarily, apply to Venom. He isn’t male – gender has no application to his species, but he likes this one because it was his first and it is Eddie’s – and his physical form is what human’s consider monstrous.

Not to mention _how_ he exists.

But… Venom knows it’s possible. So long as he and Eddie are connected, he can manifest physically – to a degree. Sexual intimacy is not out of the question. What remains to be seen is if _Eddie_ would be amenable to such a thing.

An experiment then, Venom decides.

A dream is a good place to start.

 

 

 

Eddie is used to the nightmares.

Sometimes they’re his. Sometimes they’re Venom’s. Often they bleed together, into a jumbled mess where he’s strapped down and abused, experimented on, _used._

Tonight is different.

He’s exhausted and frustrated and somehow people have found out where he’s staying. The hotel phone, blessedly, has stopped ringing every minute of every hour. It only took four calls to the front desk to insist that no, he _really_ did not want to be contacted by _anyone_ – especially people claiming to be his mom or sister. Especially since the former’s long dead and he never had any siblings.

At least the hotel bed is comfortable. Much more so than the cheap, dirty mattress he’s gotten used to over the last six months. Definitely an improvement over the hospital bed too.

Tense and exhausted, Eddie briefly wonders whether or not a jaunt to the shower and an appointment with his left hand is a good idea. He shelves that quickly. They haven’t had The Talk yet.

Venom hums under his skin, presses gently against him.

**You are tired. Tense.**

“Nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t fix,” Eddie mumbles into the pillow.

**Goodnight, Eddie.**


End file.
